Is Trump capitalising on neoliberalism’s failure?

It's the so-called blue-collar working class, especially white men who make up the bulk of Donald Trump’s support base

The popularity of Trump, despite his crass political rhetoric, is not only baffling to the larger international audience, who are following the race for the White House, but has also become a source of embarrassment even to many staunch Republican supporters. There is, however, a method to the seeming madness which explains Trump’s evident popularity.

Trump has projected himself as an anti-establishment candidate by challenging the neo-liberal doctrine of allowing the market system free reign and cutting back government interference, which Republicans have steadfastly embraced since the Reagan years, under an economic policy that has since become known as Reaganomics. American columnists, and even a recent op-ed in The Guardian, have begun pointing out how the Republican front-runner has crafted a strategy to gain support of US citizens’ discontent with the inequalities resulting from neoliberalism.

It is the so-called blue-collar working class, especially white men, who make up the bulk of Trump’s support base, and it is these people that both the Republican establishment, as well as Democrats, have long neglected.

Even the Democrats have increasingly come under the sway of neoliberalism. Long gone are the days of Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal, which had taken on the burden of increasing public spending in order to create more jobs for the working class. Bill Clinton, for instance, passed trade deals that undermined the labour movement while providing patronage to the financial sector, and he signed off on a measure that basically ended the federal welfare programme. The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had been formulated in 1933 to regulate financial institutions in the aftermath of the stock market crash leading to the Great Depression, was also under Bill Clinton. In 1999, Clinton, with support from both Republicans and Democrats within Congress, repealed this act, which in turn enabled much risky behaviour in the real estate market, eventually leading to the financial crisis in 2007-2008, the impact of which went well beyond the US.

While Obama has taken some steps to put in place regulations to curb the financial sector, he has relied heavily on endorsing the tech industry, big pharma and the telecoms. The incumbent Democratic government has thus also been criticised for throwing money at the so-called financial “innovators” while telling working class Americans that little can be done about their ruined lives. Hillary Clinton, with her backing by super PACs, offers little hope. Changing what the Democratic Party stands for requires a ‘political revolution’ which only Sanders is speaking about. However, the socialist aspirations of the Vermont senator seem a bit too radical to most Americans, who have been indoctrinated against such ideas for decades. It is easier for the working class to support the Trump movement, with his more harmful, but easier to relate to, message of blaming migrants and fanning fear against religious minorities, combined with the elusive promise of ‘making America great again’ for the working class.

Trump is promising to dismantle the so-called destructive free trade deals which have enabled many companies to move their production facilities to other countries to exploit cheap labour and make exorbitant profits under neoliberalism. Trump does not of course recognise the pain wreaked on developing countries which have been compelled to also pry open their economies and curb public expenditure under loan conditionalites of institutions like the World Bank, in order for multinationals from the US to spread their operations there. He also brushes aside how he has amassed a personal fortune based on the very economic system he is criticising. Instead, he casts himself as a shrewd deal-maker who will get a much better deal for common Americans within a global economy, which US policies have themselves been instrumental in shaping.

Support for Donald Trump is not because people are pining for a racist in the White House, but because they are frightened and sick of seeing an erosion of a fair deal which offers hard working people a chance to make a good living. Trump has been able to channel this disgruntlement into a xenophobic fear of migrants, Muslims, and countries such as China.

Trump’s pitch articulates the populist backlash against liberalism, and given the current scenario, only Bernie Sanders offers some hope to address it, if US voters decide to back him, instead of opting for the status quo under Hillary Clinton. 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 18^th, 2016.

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